Background
Bartlett was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire on July 24, 1786.
Bartlett was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire on July 24, 1786.
Ichabod attended the local academy and after graduation at Dartmouth in 1808 studied law.
He was admitted to the bar in 1811 and after practising for several years at Durham moved to Portsmouth in 1818, where he resided until his death. He began his political career as a Jeffersonian Republican, was clerk of the state Senate in 1817-18, and in the latter year was appointed by Gov. Plumer to study the subject of internal improvements in New Hampshire, preparing an elaborate report on the improvement of roads and waterways which was laid before the legislature of 1819. He represented Portsmouth in the legislature 1819-21, being speaker in the latter year, and again in 1830, 1838, 1851, and 1852 (New Hampshire Register).
In 1852 he was unsuccessfully supported for the speakership by the Whigs. During his first term in the legislature he supported the Toleration Act in an unusually forceful and eloquent address, one of the few of his speeches which has been preserved. His success at the bar came early, as is evidenced by the fact that in 1817 he appeared before the superior court as counsel for Woodward in the Dartmouth College Case, with which the most eminent lawyers in the state were associated.
He was solicitor for Rockingham County, 1818-21 (New Hampshire Register, 1819-21), and throughout his life appeared in noted civil and criminal cases. In 1822 he was elected to Congress and served three successive terms. He was not prominent in the House, but his sympathies with National Republicanism appear in the few speeches he made in that body. His longest address was a vigorous defense of the administration of President John Quincy Adams, February 6, 1828. He continued more or less active in politics after his retirement from Congress in 1829. In 1831 and 1832 he was National Republican candidate for governor, but was defeated.
In 1850 he was a member of the constitutional convention, serving as chairman of the committee on the Bill of Rights. One of the last of his recorded public services occurred in 1852 when, as a member of the judiciary committee of the House, he successfully advocated a bill repealing the "personal liberty law" which had been adopted July 10, 1846.
He was a member of the New Hampshire Historical Society.
A contemporary described him as "the Randolph of the North, the brilliant flashes of whose wit, keen sarcasm, and pungent irony, gave life and spirit to the dry juridical discussions, whose logical congruity they were allowed to relieve, but not to impair".
He was never married.